My, uh ... horse

By Todd Stadler · Saturday, March 15, 2008 6:10pm

I kind of feel like the folks at Hasbro dropped the ball here.

Fig. A: My Little Ponies and their offspring/destroyer, Gargantuus

While walking through my local Fred Meyer the other day, I noticed My Little Ponies (at bottom in the photo) that were, well, not little. And, frankly, probably not ponies. I'll get to that.

(It's true that they also weren't even mine — strike three! — but I presume that the titular first-person pronoun refers to Mr. Hasbro, stemming from the fact that you don't technically purchase My Little Pony, you just consent to a long-term lease from the corporation, which retains all rights.)

Anyhow, as I understand it, the appeal of My Little Ponies lies in combing, say, Pinkie Pie's hair while thinking how nice it is to own a pony just like you've always wanted — especially one that is pink, has a pearlescent mane, and doesn't actually require feeding or cleaning up after and can be tossed in a bin when Mom tells you to clean up your room. Because it's, you know, diminuitive. Oh, and also presents very little danger of trampling you due to its very limited range, if any, of movement.

Again, as I understand it, one topic these toys are not created to encourage thinking about is reproduction. Specifically the very problematic reproduction so obviously suggested in the photo above.

Let me explain. Of course, it's always troublesome when a community of single-gendered, yet seemingly asexual creatures manages to create offspring. Is there an as-yet-unobserved My Little Stud? (I will preclude the possibility of budding out of hand because, frankly, I find it distasteful.)

Assuming that My Little Stallion does reside at the Hasbro factory, there is still the rather troubling size of these equine young. Even if we assume that My Little Dam gave birth to a baby exhibiting such gigantism, it is likely that that mother is no longer with us, perhaps long ago having been crushed under the weight of the amniotic sac from which her monstrous offspring emerged.

And even if she did manage to survive the the birthing process, the mother was almost certainly crushed by her baby when it learned to roll onto its back and, subsequently, onto its mom.

No, biological reasoning argues against these babies being those of My Little Ponies. Anything that, in its infancy, has a volume that I'd estimate to be a buttload greater than a commonly accepted meiminorequusulian volume will clearly not grow up to be My Little Pony!

It is instead likely that some sort of equine cuckoo species has deposited its young among My Little Ponies, tricking them into raising its infants until such time as the interloper young can turn on their caretakers and, indeed, the entire community of My Little Ponies.

In short, Pinkie Pie, this spells the end. Comb your mane, prance, and frolic. For tomorrow you die.